Very brief update for our last day in Vietnam, especially as it was our third stop in Hanoi of these two weeks! We just had a day of pottering about before our night train to China... Much needed haircut and shave to avoid the 'castaway' look of Central America and a nice traditional Vietnamese BBQ and local beers to set us up before leaving! Great few weeks in Vietnam! If anything, showing Gemma around the places I'd been before and as this time it wasn't afte...

Our final major stop in Vietnam was the beautiful National Park area of Phong Nha. Only a brief stay, with two full days there, it was a visit mainly to show Gemma the area and to make the most of one of our last opportunities to hire a moped and hit the open roads for a few hours! The main attraction in Phong Nha are the caves. Although after visiting many throughout the last year, they became less appealing and after also seeing one in Phong Nha on last years...

We tried to plan for my birthday so that we were somewhere fun and also had a base for a few days and it turned out Hoi An would be the place. A beautiful French colonial town built up around a nice river, many of the buildings have a Chinese and Japanese style as well which was really nice. Apparently the river couldn't sustain larger ships and so instead of becoming a big shipping town it kept its quirky local feel about it. All the shops and buildings seem lik...

A running theme on this stint in Vietnam would become Hanoi! Both because of the Chinese visa that we had to ensure we had sorted with the Chinese embassy and because Hanoi seemed to be a hub in which we needed to pass through for most of our other destinations! The Chinese embassy was annoyingly only open until 11am and Monday - Friday, so working around this when travelling wasn't too easy! We arrived on Sunday morning with a bit of a nightmare trip! Our bus f...

As its the second time I've been through Vietnam since starting travelling, this time because it was on route to China and Gemma hadn't been in the country before, we were only hitting the centre and north. One place that had to be on the agenda again was the mountain town of Sapa in the far north of the country! A beautiful sleepy town, surrounded by amazing rolling mountains covered in trees and paddy rice fields. We arrived just at the start of their once a y...